When Genevieve Cook first met Barack Obama in the kitchen of a mutual friend’s New York flat, he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a dark leather jacket.

It was 1983, and she was impressed when this cool, self-assured young man could tell immediately she was Australian.

In those days most Americans, even supposedly cosmopolitan New Yorkers, couldn’t tell a Cockney from a Kiwi.

Romance: Genevieve Cook wasn’t the first white girlfriend in Barack Obama’s life, nor the last

But Obama had met many Aussies while living in Indonesia as a young boy with his mother and stepfather, and it turned out he and Cook — the daughter of a prominent diplomat — had lived in the country at the same time.

As the night wore on, they sat close together on an orange beanbag in the hall while Cook swigged Baileys Irish Cream straight from the bottle.

They were amazed at how much they had in common: both were children of divorced parents, both had lived all over the world and had never felt truly at home anywhere.

They exchanged phone numbers and the self-assured Obama didn’t waste time. Within days, he was cooking her dinner at his apartment.

‘Then we went and talked in his bedroom,’ Cook recalled. ‘And then I spent the night with him.

‘It all felt very inevitable.’

The U.S. president and his First Lady sometimes seem so well-suited to each other that it’s hard to imagine there ever having been any woman in his life other than the formidable Michelle, whom he met while working for a Chicago law firm in 1989.

But Obama had met many Aussies while living in Indonesia as a young boy with his mother and stepfather, and it turned out he and Cook — the daughter of a prominent diplomat — had lived in the country at the same time.

As the night wore on, they sat close together on an orange beanbag in the hall while Cook swigged Baileys Irish Cream straight from the bottle.

They were amazed at how much they had in common: both were children of divorced parents, both had lived all over the world and had never felt truly at home anywhere.

They exchanged phone numbers and the self-assured Obama didn’t waste time. Within days, he was cooking her dinner at his apartment.

‘Then we went and talked in his bedroom,’ Cook recalled. ‘And then I spent the night with him.

‘It all felt very inevitable.’

Michelle & Barry

The U.S. president and his First Lady sometimes seem so well-suited to each other that it’s hard to imagine there ever having been any woman in his life other than the formidable Michelle, whom he met while working for a Chicago law firm in 1989.

In so doing, he has revealed an unflattering picture of a president so desperate to sell an image of himself as a pioneering race warrior that he has air-brushed many of the ‘white’ elements from his life — including that string of well-heeled, well-educated white girlfriends.

Obama’s version of events, in his autobiography, is a moving story of a mixed-race child struggling to find his black identity after being deserted as a young child by his Kenyan father.

It tells how his grandfather was imprisoned by the British for helping the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya — an assertion that Obama’s step-grandmother later embellished with claims he was also tortured — for which Maraniss found no evidence.

Delighted Republican opponents are picking over the inconsistencies (38 at the last count) between Obama’s own memoirs — published in 1995 as he prepared to launch his political career — and the facts uncovered by Maraniss.

Time and again, Obama, who has had to fight hard to convince other African Americans of his ‘black credibility’, appears to have burnished his radical credentials, not least by playing up the roles of black people in his life and playing down the roles of the white.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in his romantic life.

For Genevieve Cook — to whom admittedly the President alludes in his memoirs — wasn’t the first white girlfriend in his life, nor the last.

As a young student in the early Eighties at Occidental College, a small arts university in Los Angeles, Obama developed a serious crush on another student Alexandra McNear, who was co-editor of a college literary magazine which published two of Obama’s poems.

Obama’s attendance at Occidental is significant because Occidental was founded by Armand Hammer, Occidental Petroleum CEO, lifelong communist Soviet agent and son of American Communist Party co-founder Julius Hammer. Armand Hammer was pivotal in the political careers of Al Gore Sr. and Jr. Sr. would have never been elected without him, and may have been recruited to be an agent of influence.

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I’m sure he’s unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies…
But I don’t care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shrink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses
And know he’s laughing too.

McNear, described by Maraniss as ‘lithe and mysterious, with the face of a young Meryl Streep and a literary bohemian air’, had just the sort of rarefied upbringing that might impress an amibitious young man.

Both her parents were established writers and her father, Erskine McNear, was the scion of a property empire. In the summer of 1981, Obama and McNear moved to New York, she to do a theatre course, he to finish his degree at Columbia University, so he could explore his black identity in a more African American city.

Far away from family and friends, Obama’s first summer in the Big Apple in 1981 might have been lonely but, suggests Maraniss, for the presence of McNear.

She recalls admiring his intellect, his sense of humour and his good looks.

After a first date at a dimly lit Italian restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, they embarked on a two-month affair.

She remembers it as a ‘summer of walking miles in the city, lingering over meals at restaurants, hanging out at the apartments, visiting art museums and talking about life’.

When she went back to Los Angeles, their relationship continued, largely through an exchange of passionate if pompously intellectual letters.

They discussed everything from T.S. Eliot to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — but mainly they discussed Barack Obama.

Supremely self-absorbed, Obama forever harped on about his search for meaning and identity.

He seemed oblivious to her feelings, once remarking that, tempting as it would be to run off with her when he finished his degree in New York, it would mean living ‘in some sense of compromise and retreat’.

Obama’s self-obsession would have left many women cold, if not bored to death, but McNear persevered.

Perhaps she appreciated his toe-curlingly pretentious notes on literature, like his observation that T.S. Elliot’s poem The Waste Land ‘contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Munzer [a somewhat obscure Reformation theologian] to Yeats’.

She told her diary that he was ‘the closest friend I had, and that I really loved him but didn’t know if we could sustain a relationship.’

A few months later, while Obama was visiting his mother in Honolulu, he wrote to inform McNear with cold detachment that he felt their relationship was changing from romantic love to ‘the more quotidian, but finer bonds of friendship’.

McNear went on to scandalise her family by marrying a former Serbian boxer and convicted bank robber called Bob Bozic.

Next for Obama was Genevieve Cook, whom he met at that mutual friend’s flat at a Christmas Party in 1983.

Obama had graduated and was in a dull office job as he worked out what he wanted to do with his life.

She was three years older than him, and an assistant teacher at a private school in Brooklyn.

As Maraniss observes, ‘there had been girlfriends before her but none quite like Genevieve,’ who ‘engaged him in the deepest romantic relationship of his young life’.

Cook is mentioned in Obama’s memoirs as a mystery woman.

While never naming her, he wrote: ‘There was a woman in New York that I loved. She was white. She had dark hair with specks of green in her eyes.

‘Her voice sounded like a wind chime. We saw each other for almost a year.’

She shared many of Obama’s obsessions. The daughter of a former Australian ambassador to the U.S., and a moneyed art historian who later remarried into a prominent American family, Genevieve, too, religiously kept a diary.

And, like Obama, she had a burning passion to save the world.

FYI: Obama: the Most Pro-War President in History

Barack Obama is fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya, and now wants to invade Iran and Syria.

He is spending more on the US military than any previous president.

If he serves for eight years as president, he will spend over $8 trillion on defense, including the hidden costs of the war economy.

Fifty per cent of all US tax dollars is spent on the US military. The United States spends more on the military thanthe next 12 nations combined.

Within two months of meeting, they were seeing each other every Thursday night and at weekends.

On Sundays, he would lounge around in his cheap, cockroach-infested flat in the less salubrious end of the Upper West Side, bare-chested in a blue and white sarong as he drank coffee and did the New York Times crossword.

Just Ask Yourself What Would Miss Cook Think If She Caught Barry Sitting This Close To His Male Friend?

His bedroom, she recalls, smelt of ‘running sweat, Brut spray deodorant and smoking’.

He loved to cook and they would read together and discuss writers into the night.

Like McNear, Cook was attracted by the ‘mental exhilaration’ of his intellect, marvelling at how mature he was at 22, but dismayed by his remoteness and wariness about commitment.

Needless to say, he was as self-obsessed as ever.

Narcissist

When she told him that she loved him, his response was not ‘I love you, too,’ but ‘thank you’.

Cook described him as ‘an uncommon, earnest young man’ and confided to her diary: ‘He is very beautiful — more than he thinks himself to be.’

But there was another side to him she found unsettling.

‘The sexual warmth is definitely there — but the rest of it has sharp edges and I’m finding it all unsettling,’ she wrote.

‘His warmth can be deceptive. Though he speaks sweet words and can be open and trusting, there is also that coolness.’

They often talked about race and Obama would confide that he felt like an ‘imposter’ as there was ‘hardly a black bone in his body’.

She eventually told him he ‘needed to go black’ (to date a black woman), whereas he countered that he would never find a black woman ‘he would feel truly comfortable with’.

They moved into a flat together but their intellectual discussions eventually turned into fights over issues like the washing-up.

In the end, Cook tired of his emotional ‘withheld-ness, his lack of spontaneity’, and broke up with him in 1985.

Cook insists she couldn’t have been more sympathetic about his confusion over his racial identity but that’s not how Obama portrayed it in his memoirs.

He recounts taking his New York girlfriend to see a black play after which she ‘started talking about why black people are so angry all the time’.

They had a ‘big fight’ in front of the theatre and she burst into tears and said she couldn’t be black.

All very dramatic but Cook insisted to Maraniss that it never happened.

The only play she saw with Obama was entirely different — British actress Billie Whitelaw performing a monologue written by Samuel Beckett, And there had been no row over race, she said.

Obama had to admit to Maraniss the incident happened not with Cook in New York but with someone else, though he wouldn’t elaborate.

Did it really happen? He mixed dates and places to protect former girlfriends’ identities, he said.

Soon after that period, he made strides in his career, moving to Chicago to work as a community organiser.

In a moment of acute foresight, Cook had told her diary that while she was not the woman for Obama, ‘that lithe, bubbly, strong black lady is waiting somewhere’.

She may or may not be ‘bubbly’, but ‘strong’ certainly sums up Michelle Obama.

However, before Obama met Michelle, he went on to have a relationship with another white woman in Chicago.

The woman, who like Cook was an anthropology graduate, was barely mentioned in Obama’s memoirs, but by then he was trying to establish his African-American credentials by toiling in an impoverished and predominantly black area of Chicago.

Maraniss does not identify this new woman either, but says the relationship was ‘serious’ and ‘ended much like the one with Genevieve, when Obama was ready to make his next career move’.

Within four years, he had met Michelle in Chicago and the rest we know. Obama finally had the partnership he wanted history to record — with a strong black woman, a descendant of slaves who had pushed her way up from humble roots.

But she, at least, is not a ‘dream’, unlike some of the other fantasies in his own autobiography.

The Affair?

The Lady Vanishes

I’ve learned from an intelligence and strategic communications source that on May 18, 2004, Obama came to Washington, DC on a fundraising trip. His trip also included an appearance at the May 2004 AIPAC Policy Conference.

Prior to Mr. Obama arriving in Washington, a McLean Clark National Operations Director met with Vera Baker of Baker-Wambu & Associates. I spoke with this director yesterday afternoon.

McLean Clark is a public relations and communications firm that worked for Barack Obama in connection with his 2004 Senate race. Baker-Wambu & Associates was a top fundraising firm for the Congressional Black Caucus, and Ms. Baker was also listed as the National Finance Chair for Obama’s Senate campaign. The McLean Clark director, also working for the campaign, functioned as a driver for Baker and Obama during the visit.

Ms. Baker called the driver before Mr. Obama arrived in town and asked him to pick her up from an undisclosed location and drive her to the Hotel George, where Mr. Obama would be staying. As part of his staff, Baker was apparently able to check Obama into his hotel. Ms. Baker then left the driver in the lobby and went upstairs to change. This is interesting because the driver did not see her take any bags with her as he remained downstairs. The driver was unsure where the clothes came from, or if perhaps Baker had previously been to the hotel.

After Ms. Baker changed, the driver and Ms. Baker then went to pick up Mr. Obama from Reagan National Airport.

The driver then took Baker and Obama to Georgetown, where they met with a big donor. I was unable to determine who that donor might be. The driver next took Baker and Obama to the DC Armory; he was told to drop Ms. Baker and Mr. Obama off at the AIPAC conference where President Bush gave a speech. After dropping them off, the driver’s services would no longer be required. Baker and Obama were to have secured rides home on their own.

Vera Baker

After the conference, however, Ms. Baker called the driver and told him that they did not have transportation, and asked him to come pick them up. The driver returned to the conference and picked up Mr. Obama, Ms. Baker, and a third person, the woman with whom Ms. Baker was to be staying.

According to the driver, he drove to the woman’s home, but she alone departed. Ms. Baker remained in the car with Mr. Obama. The driver then brought Baker and Obama back to Hotel George, where he dropped the two of them off for the evening.

The story originally provided by the intelligence and strategic communications source was verified by speaking directly to the driver (who was granted anonymity) Monday afternoon. In and of itself, the fact that Ms. Baker went back to Mr. Obama’s hotel the night of May 18, 2004 is not proof of an extramarital affair. But the subsequent mysterious disappearance of Vera Baker is surprising, and perhaps suggestive.

Despite its successes, Baker-Wambu & Associates suddenly shut down in 2006. It is hard to find precise dates or a specific reason why the successful consultancy closed. Baker later claimed she worked at Alta Capital Group in Chicago, a municipal bond broker-dealer, but there doesn’t appear to be a residence for her in the Windy City, nor did she appear to have ever held a residence in New York, as others have claimed. Baker later appeared in Martinique.

Again, we don’t know precisely when, but we do know that she was still there very recently. Her latest business venture, a consultancy named Cape Caribbean, LLC, has, again suddenly, pulled its web site offline.

On the “About Us” page captured from the site before it was shut down, Baker provided a brief professional bio:

Prior to launching Cape Caribbean, Ms. Baker worked for Alta Capital Group-a full-service municipal bond broker-dealer. She joined Alta Capital Group after serving as a Principal at Baker-Wambu & Associates, a strategic political and fundraising consulting firm based in Washington, DC. Previously, she served as the National Finance Director on Senator Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate Campaign. She also served as the Deputy Political Director at the Democratic SenatorialCampaign Committee.

I was unable to ascertain what Cape Caribbean, LLC actually did as a consultancy. Nor was I able to determine what Ms. Baker—the political fundraiser—actually did at Alta CG.

What I have confirmed via both the intelligence and strategic communications source and the (now former) McLean Clark National Operations Director is that NewsMax, the National Enquirer, ABC News, and NBC News have all had the basic facts of the Baker-Obama liaison for some time now, and so far, none have come forward with any reporting.

Let me say that again—they spoke with the driver, and have not moved with the story. They had less evidence of an non-existent affair between John McCainand Vicki Iseman, so why are they not pressing this story, which actually has a person confirming that Baker and Obama were dropped off at his hotel late at night?

NewsMax, typically a fervent conservative monthly, has not pursued the story. source claim they were perhaps dissuaded by the current political climate and fear of possible difficulties if Obama is elected.

As a tabloid, the National Enquirer could have a profit motive in holding the story until after the election. If Obama loses the election as the result of a scandal, it would be a short-term sensation. But if a scandal were to explode around a new President-elect, it could be a lucrative story for the tabloid for far longer.

ABC News and NBC News have contacted the driver (he told me), who verified the first-hand account related to reporters for each of these news organizations. These news organizations may be “slow rolling” the story, purposefully slowing its release so that it breaks only after the November 4. This may be for both ideological reasons—many journalists support Obama’s political platform—and for the more pragmatic motive shared with the Enquirer of better ratings and higher profit if a dramatic scandal embroils a new presidency.

Meanwhile… Where is Vera Baker?

Why did she suddenly leave a lucrative consulting practice for an unknown position in an entirely different line of work, before skipping the country entirely? Did she have an affair with a man who may be our next President, and if so, should that change our minds about how we think about him?

With Vera Baker, we have many questions.

What we don’t have—and what too few journalists seem to be interested in finding—are answers.

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Huggin & Munnin

Unconstitutional Powers By Repetition

Usurpations by one branch of government, of powers entrusted to a coequal branch, are not rendered constitutional by repetition.

The United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional hundreds of laws enacted by Congress over the course of five decades that included a legislative veto of executive actions in INS v. Chada, 462 U.S. 919 (1982).

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Constitutional Republic Of The United States

True Federalism.

“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.

Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, law, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself.

It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body.”